Alex Cluness - '2005'

sample poems

'2005' is the voyage of a delusional and despairing character, struggling back and forth across a constantly blurring border between cinema and reality, the physical streets of Edinburgh and the celluloid worlds of Hong Kong and Wong Kar-Wai.

Nothing is concrete and nothing makes sense to the main character - there is a narrative of a kind in the sequence of poems, but it is a fractured and doomed world and ultimately the story is one of obsession, disintegrating personality and hopelessness. There are only a handful of copies left.

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"2005 extends the range of Shetland’s writing, using access to global culture as a source of found material. In that sense it is very much of today – it earns its title. But personally I don’t think that was the central aim. For a poet, that must always be to make fine poetry, regardless of time, place or subject matter. Alex Cluness has achieved that here - and if that book festival prediction is to come true, it will be in no small way due to the success of North Idea and initiatives like it. With this pamphlet, new possibilities appear."
- Robert Alan Jamieson, The Shetland Times

"Alex has a knack for nailing the sensation stirred in that swarming clumsy mess of feeling with an instant remarkable clarity. It's a delight to encounter."
- The New Shetlander